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October 11, 2007

ALCS/NLCS Predictions

The Rockies and Diamondbacks are evenly matched teams with comparable strengths and weaknesses, and each has a number of young stars or stars-in-waiting well worth watching. Both swept more experienced opponents in the first round, striking a blow against the notion that experience is a determinant of postseason fate. This is simply a terrific series ahead of us, one that despite the locations —- both teams' home parks are among the better hitters' parks in the game -- could feature more low-scoring games than its AL counterpart. ... Diamondbacks in seven.

Rockies in 7.Red Sox in 6.

And I'm sticking with my months-long assertion that Slügö will be the ALCS MVP.

51 comments:

ESPN's simulations have Coloradio winning the pennant 693 times out of 1,000. When the Rockies won Game 1, their chnaces improved to 84.6%. When they lost Game 1, they still won the pennant 55% of the time.

I also had Sox in 6 (as I voted in the poll) - I was in the minority that voted for a sweep in the DS :-D

But I'm thinking Rockies in 6 as well, they'll split the first two, rockies will take the next two then lose before heading back to AZ to capture the pennant. That's my guess. They might not even lose that much with the way they've been playing recently.

Remember they played each other at Fenway this year, and Colorado took 2 out of 3.

Tim Wakefield beat Aaron Cook (who is on the NLCS roster) 2-1, so the Sox didn't give Wakefield many runs, but they gave him enough.

Things went downhill from there. Josh Fogg beat Schilling in game 2 by a score of 12-2. Schilling gave up 5 earned runs in that game. That's why Fogg is called the Dragon Slayer. He tends to beat the good pitchers, strangely enough.

Game 3 was Beckett's first loss of the season, allowing 6 runs on 10 hits in 5 innings. Francis wasn't much better from a hits and innings standpoint, but he kept the Sox from scoring. 5 IP, 7 H. The bullpen took it from there, giving up 1 run in 4 innings.

But it's been a long time since they've seen each other, though. Who would have the edge now? I think the Red Sox would. Maybe we'll see. Maybe not. Long ways to go.

Well, this is what happens when a team is in the playoffs that doesn't usually draw a lot of fans. The bandwagoning fans go to the game and they don't KNOW the game so they think they're correct in their booing.

And their throwing crap on the field. Oh yeah, that's fine, too.

Good job by Clint Hurdle to pull his team off the field, though. That really not only protects the players, but sends a message that he will not play in this nonsense.

They should be booing their own guy. Had he not made the attempt to break it up, the guy would've been safe at first because they wouldn't have even thrown to first.

I just wonder how many of them know the game well enough to distinguish that fact. Probably not many. When you're not selling out a game in the playoffs, the fans you do get are not going to be very knowledgeable ones, I don't think.

I don't think so. First of all, the Diamondbacks are not going to have a lot of diehards. The problem with Phoenix is that people move to Phoenix from other places around the country and already are fans of other teams. Look at the Red Sox fans who turned out from around the area when the Sox played in Phoenix.

It just looks like to me that they'd need to do some serious advertising to get the people in the ballpark for this game. I don't know how exactly they do it, but the fans in Arizona are clearly displaying their baseball knowledge.

Certainly gives people a pretty good reason to root for Colorado, I guess.